The NPR Politics Podcast - The midterm map is beginning to take shape

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Beginning in March, voters will start picking their preferred candidates to run for House and Senate races throughout the country. With a record number of incumbents retiring, we look at what seats are especially competitive & the issues that might play big roles in how voters make up their minds.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from the BBC with their podcast, The Global Story. With Osama Khalid in D.C. and Tristan Redmond in London, the global story brings you daily news from where the world and America meet. Search for The Global Story from BBC Podcasts. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast for Monday. February 9th, 2026. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanera, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, a midterms temperature check. We are just somehow only a month away from the first primary elections of this midterm season. And already a record number of House lawmakers have decided that they are not running again.

So, Domenico, I want to start big picture here. Lay out the landscape for the Senate and the House right now as we see it. Well, you know, there are, you know, about third of the Senate is up every two years. They have six-year terms. But only about 10 seats this year that are truly. competitive. And, you know, because of some Democratic recruiting targets, they feel a little bit better about their potential capability of being able to take over the Senate. But it's really a long shot at this point because Republicans have a three-seat majority and Democrats would need to pick up

a gain of four seats to be able to take control of the Senate because Trump is president and J.D. Vance as vice president comes in to break ties. Okay. So they would need to win basically every seat they They currently have and then pick up four other Republican seats to pick up the Senate. Is that right? They need a net gain of four. Okay. So between wins and losses of their own and wins and losses of Republicans, they need a net gain of four. And what about the House?

Well, the House, you know, it's a razor thin majority for Republicans right now. You know, Republicans can only afford to lose two seats before they're looking at being back in the minority. And that goes a lot more with the national mood. Republicans have had a huge advantage because of gerrymandering over the years where a lot of the districts in the country lean a little bit more toward the right. But that gap has actually been closing in recent years. So that gap is not quite as big. But we have fewer and fewer competitive districts. So the universe of competitive seats is smaller than it ever has been. But long story short, things are starting to tip in Democrats' direction because midterm elections are usually a referendum. on the president. Trump has had a really bad month. He's been under 40% for his job approval rating in our NPR PBS News Marist poll since November. Affordability is still a big issue in the country. People feeling like Trump is not focused on that as much as he should be. That has a tendency to depress the base so you don't get as many people to turn out to vote. And Republicans have had issues

turning out conservatives when Trump's not on the ballot. And independents are lining up with Democrats on almost every issue in very strong ways. So that makes it really hard. when in those swing districts, independence are so important and Trump is really proving toxic to independence. Right. So there's all these indicators pointing seemingly towards Democrats right now. And another one of those indicators, right, Stephen, is retirements because more Republican incumbents at this point have announced that they're going to not seek their seat in 2026. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. So I, one of many spreadsheets that I have, have a retirement tracker that you can look at online, that I keep updating every day, it almost feels like.

Right now, we're up to 63 current members of Congress who say that they don't plan to return to their seat next year. Some of them are retirement. Some of them are people who are in the House trying to run for Senate, and some of them are people trying to go back to their states to run as governor. And you have also one House member running for Attorney General of their state. But this is notable for a few reasons. One, this is a record number of people who say they're not coming back. They are announcing it a record early amount of time before election day, and that doesn't even account for the fact that many of these incumbents might lose in the primaries or in the general election.

It's important to note though Miles, there's always turnover, especially in these midterm years, when, as Domenico mentioned, the party in power tends to have a rough time. There are more Republicans planning to leave than Democrats, and many of those are notable names in Congress. longtime party leaders like Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Republican Mitch McConnell. So it's not just some of these minor players that we're talking about here. Can you dig in a little bit more on the reasons for why people say they're not running for re-election? I mean, is this just, I feel like I've talked to congressional correspondent Barbara Sprint a lot about like this also just currently in the current moment feels like a bad job. Like is a lot of this just members of Congress aren't having very much fun right now or what are the reasons?

Well, I can't imagine being in Washington right now is a very, very fun place to be. Like Domenico mentioned, it's a narrow majority in the House, narrow majority in the Senate. With the lack of competitive races, that's not likely to change, even if who's in charge changes hands. On the Democratic side, it has been notable that you have many of these older incumbents that are leaving, like Pelosi and like Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Gary Peters, and then you have the knock-on effect of these ambitious House members, running to replace them in the Senate. Republicans, you do have some of that generational change, but there's also very few remaining lawmakers who are Trump critics like North Carolina Senator

Tom Tillis, Nebraska Representative Don Bacon, and people in various stages of leadership in the Republican Party and on subcommittees and committees that will not have much power if Democrats take back the House. There's not really a lot looking ahead for the final two years of President Trump's final term either. So there's not really much to look forward to if you're a Republican in Congress these next two years. I do want to flag one thing, though. It is also notable how many lawmakers that we are seeing that do not want to stay in Washington and want to go back to try to lead their state. Typically, it is a more prestigious thing and you see a lot of governors running for Senate. But this time we actually have four senators that say they want to leave. They want to run to be

governor of their state. Tommy Tuberville, a valubberville. Alabama, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota, and Michael Bennett of Colorado. That's a big sign, too. Although I'd say running for governor is often a better leaping off point to run for president than being a senator. The old joke in Washington is that senators wake up in the morning and look at themselves and see a potential president, but they have far less success often than governors do, given that executive experience. But I do think that when it comes to these retirements, which party is retiring more, be a weather vein, a bellwether for what happens in the midterm elections. Also, open seats,

seats where there's no incumbent, certainly opens up the possibility of winning a little bit more because the incumbency rates are just so high. You know, entrenched name identification. It doesn't cost as much money because you don't have to, you know, figure out who this person is. And people just like to vote for the person who they've voted for previously. So an open seat, far more expensive for the party in power and that can make it really difficult. The other obvious big thing that we've been talking about all year, and I mentioned affordability, the economic outlook is just bleak. I mean, there was a Pew Research Center poll that was out last week that found 72% of people rated the economy as fair or poor. Plurality, 38% said that they expect the economy

to get worse in the next year. 52 to 28% margin respondents said Trump's policies have made things worse than better. So if an election year like this, if midterm elections often are referenda on the president himself and the big issue is the economy, people are saying the economy is not great and Trump is to blame. I do want to also zero in on something you kind of mentioned earlier, Domenico, about the idea that there just are fewer competitive districts in the House. I think that's going to be something that we gloss over a lot as we kind of zero in on the 36 or so races that we're watching. That is a tiny number of races to decide the House when you consider the fact that there's 435 members of the House and basically everything hinges on just

this few dozen, which is a big change from even just as recent as a few years ago. I don't know. I just feel like that is something that doesn't get talked about very much when we talk about control of the house, just how few districts are actually competitive these days. Yeah, and things generally do tip in one direction in these elections. So if you're a Republican thinking about whether or not you should stick around if you should retire or not, you know, you sort of take a look at this entire landscape of things and all of the pressure that's put on them. Because, you know, when you talk to people who cover Capitol Hill, you know, they're constantly raising money. They're constantly on the phone. And that can get really annoying, especially when your team is on the defense.

And you know, one of the things, Miles, that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is how some states are redrawing their congressional maps to give one party or the other an advantage. I mean, How did we get there? And what does that look like now? It's so interesting. I feel like eight months ago, it did feel like that was going to be the story of this midterms was this kind of unprecedented redistricting wave that President Trump set off by asking Texas to redraw its maps to advantage Republicans last summer. But basically we watched like roughly a dozen states talk about redrawing, actually redrawing, have courts throughout their maps. There was all of this stuff happening both in Democratic and Republican-led states. And the net result actually seems to be sort of a wash. I think is the most shocking part about this. I feel like is that most analysts at this point seem to think that the great redistricting war of 2025 is not going to actually decide who controls the House in 2026. The only caveat, I'll say, though, is that if a Supreme Court does strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act this year, it's possible. Other states, especially in the South, could redraw districts and change things again. But at this point,

it just seems to be a lot less of a factor than we thought it was going to be six months ago. And the clock's starting to tick. I mean, primaries are coming up real quick. Yeah, I mean, we are just a couple weeks away, to be clear, from primary elections. Arkansas, Texas, and North Carolina all vote on March 3rd. That is so soon. But we can leave it there for now. Let's take a quick break and more in just a second. This message comes from Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe.

You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. And we are back. And in honor of the Super Bowl yesterday, I have decided, as host of this year podcast, that we are going to do an NFL-style draft

of the places that we are watching most closely this year. I have not warned you guys about this, but I have decided this. And so this is how we're going to do this segment. And the podcast guys, have given Stephen Fowler the first pick in the first annual midterms what to watch draft. Where are you going first, Stephen?

Okay, Miles, with the first pick in the draft, I'm taking Iowa. Here's why. What? Whoa. It's the state that has a potentially competitive Senate race, a competitive governor's race. Three of its four U.S. House districts will likely have competitive races. And if you look at Trump's popularity and approval ratings,

among states that Republicans have won the last three presidential elections, Iowa is right there at the bottom. You look at why it has industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and other places that are very much affected by Trump's economic plans. And it also is a state where you can get the breadth of how unpopular Republicans could be or how much they could separate themselves from Trump. Yeah, I feel like Iowa is also so interesting just because if Democrats, and this is a big if, Democrats do want to take back the Senate, I feel like they're going to need to take one of these random states that isn't generally talked about in the sort of swing state category. And Iowa feels like one of those places where it's at least possible. Yeah. And look, I mean, Iowa is a little bit of a stretch for Democrats at this point. It's in the likely Republican category right now, according to the Cook Political Report.

There's a lot of places on that list, Maine, North Carolina being two of the main ones in the toss-up category. then Alaska and Ohio where Democrats got pretty good recruits that are leaning toward Republicans at this point, but could be ones that Democrats hope to play in. Domenico, the podcast gods have given you the second pick in the first annual midterms what to watch for draft. Where are we going? Well, right now, at least this point in the calendar, I'm really interested in Texas. And not just because I'm married to a Texan, and I hear a lot about what's going on in Texas. But Texas is also interesting because there's four House seats that are competitive, likely toss-ups or liens. Three of those are Democratic-held seats, so Democrats are going to have to hold on to some of those and be able to then try to go on offense in some of those places.

Not to mention redistricting in Texas and seeing how those districts shake out, how new people come in or don't. And also the Senate race, because there's a primary coming up in that Senate race very shortly next month. And that's John Cornyn's seat, the longtime senator, who's mostly seen as like, you know, a traditional George W. Bush kind of Republican has never been a real like bomb throwing, you know, pro Trump candidate. But he's found a different issue this time around that has really taken the entire state by storm, focusing not on affordability, but on Sharia law. In fact, here's some of the ad that he's been running quite widely. No organization that supports terrorists should receive taxpayer benefits. And Sharia law has no place in American courts or communities. Feels like a 2003 kind of throwback post-9-11, and he's not the only candidate in the state who's running these ads that are, quote, anti-Sheria law. And a lot of it just comes down to the fact that there's a planned development in Plano, North Dallas, where you are going to have a mosque built.

and, you know, several homes that will be built around this mosque. The developers say that anybody's allowed to be there and anybody's allowed to be in that development, but Republicans have really run with it and are running on it in multiple races. I feel like I'm having, yeah, real flashbacks. I also just watched the first season of Homeland, which is the same thing where everything is feeling very 2005-ish right now. That was a very, that's a really interesting ad. It just feels so out of left field for us in the national. media. And I also want to note tomorrow we are going to have a deep dive specifically into Texas

and to a lot of this stuff in tomorrow's episode. So look out for that. I'm a little mad Domenico because I was going to go Texas for my pick. So it's very NFL drafty where I was like, oh, man, I just got scooped. But I have a big board here. So we're going to go Michigan with a third pick. I feel like Michigan classic swing state, a state that voted for Donald Trump, but also elected a Democratic senator in 2024 and Alyssa Slotkin. And I feel like it's going to to test a lot of the things we've already been talking about on the podcast, specifically, Domenico, some of the economic stuff you've talked about and laid out in polling, where I feel like when I looked at exit polls, Donald Trump won voters who were not happy with the economy in

2024, like four out of five voters in Michigan. And I feel like I'm very interested to see, are those still Republican Senate voters, or are those voters who are disillusioned with the tariffs, frustrated with the economy? And then the other thing I'm watching in Michigan is this test of something I've heard a lot from Republicans who seem to feel like they are, in some cases, a little bit more organized on the candidate level. And right now, it seems like the likely Republican nominee for Senate is going to be Mike Rogers, who lost that race to Alyssa Slotkin in 2024. But there's a wide open Democratic primary. And I think in a lot of places, Republicans are kind of betting on Democrats kind of eating themselves up in the primary process and coming out a little bit

weathered. And so I'm very interested to see how that primary plays out early in the year as well and who comes out of that to see where where the race stands in November. And it's a state, like you said, with an open Senate race that's held by a Democrat, Gary Peters, retiring in that race. And there's four competitive house races, which is among the most for any state. So, you know, that's going to be a real key place to see how the country has moved, especially since Trump won the state in 2024. Stephen, you're on the clock again with the fourth pick. My fourth pick is North Carolina.

It has the first primary of the year, along with Texas, like we talked about. So it's going to be a key place to really get a sense of where the electorate is in the early part of 2026. You have a house primary in the Research Triangle area where you've got a younger generation Democrat trying to challenge an existing Democrat from the left. You have the gerrymandering aspect to it with what they've done with Don Davis, the Democratic. in the northern part of North Carolina. And you also have a sleeper pick in western North Carolina where there's a very localized issue of Hurricane Helene recovery that is kind of shaping things up under the hood that you wouldn't necessarily think about looking at just top-level data.

Okay, a really good pick. Domenico, fifth pick. Go for it. Well, you know, I'm going to pick one here that I think I'm stealing from someone else. And that's from Stephen because he lives in Georgia. Well, I'm going to take Georgia and that Senate race because I think that Senate race is probably the top one to watch whether or not there could be, you know, a Democratic chance at all. They probably have to hold on to that Senate seat. That's with John Ossoff, the current senator in that state.

And I'm also watching that race because of AI and this whole new sort of use of deep fakes in campaign. Pains. There was an ad that was run by Mike Collins, who's a congressman currently, and he ran an ad with a deep fake of John Ossoff with a really tiny disclosure in the bottom that a lot of people probably missed that said that this was generated by AI. But it had Ossoff saying, you know, I don't understand farming because the only time I've ever seen a farm is on Instagram. And it looks kind of hokey. And if you've seen like a lot of AI, you're probably like, that's AI. But for a normal person, they probably listened and said, what is that?

And I think the strangest part of it, it raises a lot of questions about the ethics of using deep fakes, of using AI, of transparency going forward. But also when Collins was asked about this, he didn't back away from it. He just said, you know, we're just trying to keep up with modern times. I do feel like, Stephen, I was looking at the Osoph race a year. year ago as kind of just assuming it was going to go Republican way. But I feel like I was one of those people who saw those special election results this past November where Democrats actually won a statewide race or a couple statewide races there. And I feel like that, that, am I right in feeling like Asaf had to be seeing that as well and feeling pretty good about his chances?

Georgia is a place where there were several special elections at Democrats did much better than expected, including flipping two statewide seats on the Public Service Commission, which is the utility regulator, which includes regulating things like data centers, which are used for AI. So, Domenico, you do have the goods on the draft pick there that it's all related. It's one reason why I'm here in Georgia and am very keen on seeing where this state's races develop. And I have to say, when it comes to special elections, it's another factor in midterm elections. that when you look at them in aggregate and you shouldn't look at special elections on their own to think that that's an indicator of what happens in midterms. But when you take them all together,

it has been eye-popping. Democrats have really swept so many of these special elections. They did really well in those off-year elections. And when it comes to these congressional races that have been special elections, Democrats have won them by double digits. They just won a Texas state Senate seat that Trump had won by 17 points. And the, Democratic candidate won it by 14. And I think that special elections are a huge indicator of activism and which side has enthusiasm. And that is really where the secret sauce, the juice is in a midterm election, getting your base out, getting enough people out because the turnout in special elections is always lower than it is in presidential years. That's what I was going to say. It does

feel like a confluence of two things happening at once where you kind of got all these headwinds pointing towards Democrats. And then even before this election cycle, the Democratic Party is becoming the party that is high turnout voters, you know, Trump won with the sort of low turnout voters in 2024. But high turnout voters, highly educated voters, voters with higher incomes generally have been moving towards the Democratic Party. And those are the voters that come out for those special elections that come out in midterm years. So I do think that's definitely going to be something to watch. For the final pick of the inaugural. midterm what to watch for draft.

I'm going a little outside the box here, guys. You're going to have to allow it because I am creating this draft and therefore am the arbiter of the rules. But I'm going to be picking three districts that all have higher than

average Latino populations. These are three competitive districts. California's 22nd, Arizona's 6th, and Colorado's 8th. And I feel like they all fit into this bucket of districts that move to the right in 2024, where Donald Trump improved on expectations when it comes to Latino voters, and I am just really interested to see what happens now with how this voting block specifically

is perceiving his increased immigration enforcement. Miles, as my grandfather used to say, now you speak of my language. I love what you did there in putting the bucket of, you know, a theme to those three races, and they're really, really good ones to look at. to understand what's happened with Latinos in this country and how far they've moved away from Trump because in those off-year elections, boy, Democrats won them by two-to-one margins. All right, well, we can leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to the inaugural draft. Thanks for putting up with this Stephen and Domenica, more importantly.

It's great. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Domenica Montanour, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.